Hypothermia, Profilers, and Hangman Equal Disaster
by grumkinsnark
Summary: Wherein Morgan and Prentiss are stuck in an ice cave on one side of the mountain while the rest of the team is stuck on the other. And isn’t that just *awesome*.


Written for the Dudley Do-Right Memorial Peril/Hurt/Comfort/Id-Fic-Athon: CM Gen/AU/Crack/Crossover Edition prompt challenge: "Two team members of your choice; playing word games while stuck waiting for rescue; concussion, hypothermia/heat stroke/other." This is more lighthearted than about 99.8% of my stories, so let me know how I do.

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**Hypothermia + Profilers + Hangman = Disaster**

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It was supposed to be a simple job. Just a routine witness interview.

Of course, the case had sent them over to Silverton, Colorado in the middle of January, and the witness happened to be up on the mountain, but you know.

Routine.

Really, the way it all went down was in such an absurd way that if they hadn't experienced it for themselves, they would have just called bullshit. That's all moot now, though, because Morgan and Prentiss are stuck in an ice cave on one side of the mountain while the rest of the team is stuck on the other. And isn't that just _awesome_.

"Stupid avalanche," Emily mutters, rubbing her arms some more. Turning on her fellow ice-caver, she snaps, "Why did you make us head out _first_? If you hadn't insisted, this wouldn't have happened."

Morgan's not amused. "Prentiss. Answer."

Huffing in minor concession, Emily replies, "F."

Morgan picks up the stick he'd been using and draws an arm. "No," he says blandly. "No F."

"There is so an F!" Emily objects, breath clouding in the below-freezing air. "There _has_ to be an F."

Gesturing to the marks in the snow, Morgan shrugs. "Sorry," he says. "Don't know what to tell you. There's no F."

Emily narrows her eyes. "You sure?" she says vindictively. "'Cause I think those two words are 'fuck you.'"

"Well, now you're just not even trying," replies Morgan unconcernedly. "You just got yourself another arm, Prentiss."

Seething, Emily leans over and makes herself a snowball. Which is really more of an iceball, as Morgan finds out when it crashes into the side of his face. "Ow!" he exclaims, tossing the drawing stick at his attacker. "That was uncalled for."

"Retribution," says Emily with an evil smile. "For, you know, getting us _trapped in an ice cave by an avalanche_."

"Not my fault!" Morgan snaps, now getting annoyed. "You didn't have to go with me. You could have stayed with the rest of the group."

"Maybe I should have! I bet Hotch or Rossi, or, hell, _Reid_ wouldn't have gotten me stuck in a cave."

Morgan rounds on her. "At least we're _alive_," he says forcefully. Pausing for a minute to note the distance between them, he motions to it. "Though probably not for long, given your aversion to sharing airspace. Never mind that we're in the stages of hypothermia."

"We're not going to die," Emily says, rolling her eyes. (She chooses to ignore the snide part of her brain that tells her there may be truth to the hypothermia thing. Have her fingers always been this color?) "They know where we are. Kind of."

As if to prove Morgan right, Emily's body gives a betraying shiver. She looks away from his told-you-so glance. "Yeah, sure. Of course we're not," he says sarcastically. "Because an avalanche is just the thing we prepared for. What with all the survival gear, ice picks, and beacons that we brought. Oh, wait…"

Emily glares at him, purposefully sliding to the other end of the admittedly tiny cavern. There's tense silence between the two, before Emily finally sighs again. "B."

Looking over at her, Morgan smirks. He grabs the twig and sketches a leg on the stick figure. "Nope. No B."

Vaguely aware that she's acting decades younger than her age, she walks—crawls, really, since the ceiling is barely tall enough to accommodate Morgan sitting—over and smudges out the game. Taking the stick, she jabs Morgan in the stomach. "Cheater," she says. "There was definitely a B."

"That's what you said about F," Morgan points out, absently rubbing his abdomen where she'd poked him. "Maybe you just suck at Hangman, thought of that?"

Emily scowls. "You can't suck at _Hangman_," she says. "It's guessing letters."

"And yet you manage to suck at it."

"Eat me."

"Might have to if we don't get rescued."

"My mother had a friend in the Mossad who taught me how to kill someone with a thumb. I've been meaning to get a test subject."

"There's a lot to learn about you, Emily Prentiss."

"Shut up."

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"Think they've killed each other yet?" J.J. asks, her hands deep in her jacket pockets as she watches the search and rescue team finish digging out the snow. It'd taken them four hours to actually locate the two missing profilers, and is going on the fifth to get them out. That amount of time doesn't bode well.

Hotch and Rossi look at each other worriedly. "We may have to put up Help Wanted ads," Rossi comments, only half-joking.

"It's lucky they found a cave," says Reid. "Statistically, being buried in an avalanche after even just half an hour lowers the chance of survival to thirty percent."

J.J. stares at the younger profiler. "Seriously?" she asks. "Could you be any less motivating right now?"

Reid looks at her oddly, like he'd never considered it. "Probably."

J.J.'s about to retort, when one of the rescue members shouts that they've got it cleared. Hotch, Rossi, J.J., and Reid hike over to the site and peer in. They sigh a mixture of relief and surprise at the scene. The hypothermia had eventually coerced unconsciousness upon them, but once they noticed that they were starting to have difficulty putting together sentences, even Emily decided they needed to do something. Reluctantly, she and Morgan had agreed to huddle together in a corner by means of conserving heat, and although it wasn't exactly a sauna, it, along with the relatively fast rescue, had more or less saved their lives.

A day later, after they'd been hospitalized and force-heated, Emily rouses from her sleep. Noticing eyes on her, she looks to her left to see Morgan staring, idly eating bad hospital Jell-O.

"What?" she asks groggily.

Morgan sets down the cup and smiles. "There was an F. Two, actually."

Emily throws a spork at him.


End file.
